


What We Are

by hy_jinkx



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Angst, F/F, Lesbian AU, Unrequited Love, a couple minor alcohol mentions, vanessa as the overly anxious one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-09 19:54:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19482883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hy_jinkx/pseuds/hy_jinkx
Summary: Vanessa knew then that she didn’t just have a crush on Brooke. No, Vanessa had fallen for Brooke, and she had fallenhard.(lesbian unrequited love au from Vanessa's pov)





	What We Are

The delighted shrieks of children and the booming laughter of friends cracking jokes rang out through the late November night air. Vanessa, however, was not laughing. She tapped her foot repeatedly against the broken-up concrete of the narrow sidewalk, her hands tightly gripping the icy-cold metal of the barricade in front of her.

_Brooke was late._

As time ticked by, Vanessa’s patience grew thin. For a minute, she debated pushing her way out of the crowd to make the trek home early. She turned, ready to leave, but that was when she spotted the tall blonde she had been waiting on. Vanessa could feel her heart begin to pound in her chest as she watched the girl scan the hoard of people, undoubtedly looking for Vanessa.

Relief flooded through Vanessa as she realized she hadn’t been stood up by Brooke after all. Not that she _technically_ would have been stood up if Brooke hadn’t shown up, this wasn’t even close to being a date. No, this was two friends hanging out in a very crowded town square at the annual Christmas lighting ceremony, an event that _just so happened_ to be pretty well-known for attracting a plethora of couples. It didn’t matter that they were both gay or that this was the first time they had decided to hang out without mutual friends around. They were just friends, nothing more.

Vanessa stood up on her tiptoes, pushing down on the barricade with one hand as if it would give her some added height as she used her free hand to wave down her friend. It took a combination of waving and calling her name a couple times before Brooke spotted the shorter girl. Her face lit up immediately, her ever-charming smile present as she cautiously navigated her way through the crowd of people, seemingly gliding towards her with all the grace of a ballerina. Vanessa wondered if Brooke had ever taken dance classes as a child, but decided that was a question for another time, adding it to the growing list of things she wanted to learn about the blonde.

The truth was, Vanessa hadn’t known Brooke very long at all, a few months at most. They had been introduced by Kameron, a mutual friend who’d had a sneaking suspicion the two would get along pretty well. Kameron had been right – more than right, really. Vanessa could clearly remember feeling like she couldn’t breathe the first time she met Brooke, stumbling over her words like an idiot because she had almost immediately developed a crush on the blonde.

“You made it!” Vanessa said, resisting the urge to pull the taller girl into a hug. Her heart nearly skipped a beat as Brooke let out a laugh, and Vanessa stepped to the side to allow her friend to stand beside her at the barricade. A mother behind them shot the pair a look that was anything but pleasant, before letting out a huff and leaving to find a new spot to stand with her young children.

“I would have been here sooner, but it was impossible to find a path that wasn’t packed,” Brooke explained. It didn’t matter what Brooke’s excuse was, Vanessa would have accepted almost any response without getting mad at the other girl. Brooke was here now, and that was all that mattered.

Vanessa knew then that she didn’t just have a crush on Brooke. No, Vanessa had fallen for Brooke, and she had fallen _hard_.

Down the street, colorful lights began to turn on one-by-one. Nearby spectators let out thunderous cheers, and Vanessa could see people pulling one another in for kisses as the lights came on above them. This was the town’s unofficial tradition: kisses under the newly turned on Christmas decorations to celebrate the beginning of the holiday season. While Vanessa had been going to the square for years to watch the displays turn on, she had never participated in this part of the event, but neither had Brooke. This much she knew, but only because it had come up when they were discussing plans to meet up to watch the lights turn on.

As the promise of lights above them turning on drew closer to being fulfilled, Vanessa found herself tapping her fingers against the metal barricade excitedly, mentally counting down the minutes until the whole square was lit up. She felt a hand cover her own and immediately stopped her tapping. When she redirected her gaze to focus on Brooke, Vanessa raised a single eyebrow.

“We should kiss when our light turns on,” Brooke suggested, casting a challenging smirk at Vanessa. “You know, just to say we’ve done it.”

Vanessa swore her heart stopped for a moment. Her breath caught in her throat, and for a brief moment she felt like the world around her was spinning far too fast for her to be able to wrap her mind around anything. _Brooke wanted to kiss her._ It didn’t matter that the blonde claimed to just want the experience of kissing someone when the lights turned on, she had chosen Vanessa as that someone, and that was the part the shorter girl was focusing on. That, and her _damn smirk_ , the one that never failed to make Vanessa want to throw caution to the wind, friendship be damned, and kiss her with everything she had.

Vanessa was never this cautious with her feelings, but something about Brooke made her hold back.

“Sure, why not?” she replied after a slight pause, a forced chuckle spilling from her mouth. She was nervous, but would be damned if she let it show. Brooke couldn’t know the effect she had on Vanessa, the power she held over the girl. Who knew what kind of chaos would ensue if Brooke knew the truth.

A giant LED gift box nearby had just lit up, casting a vibrant green glow over the crowd. Vanessa couldn’t tell if Brooke was joking or not. She desperately searched her friend’s face for any indication of how serious she was being, but found nothing. She supposed she would know soon enough, though.

The candy cane ten feet away from them suddenly began to glow, and Vanessa became acutely aware of her heart pounding violently in her chest. Were the lights speeding up, or was she so on-edge that the world seemed to be moving twice as fast? She didn’t have time to figure it out. Just as the sled above them flashed to life, tinting everything around them red, Vanessa could feel the soft touch of Brooke’s fingers gently tilting her chin up, then the air was being knocked out of her as their lips met and Vanessa’s eyes fluttered shut.

It was happening, and every nerve in her body crackled with electricity. The kiss was gentle and slow, but simultaneously held a sense of urgency in it, reflecting the fear Vanessa felt as she wondered if she would ever get another chance to kiss Brooke ever again. It made Vanessa’s head spin, sent her heart racing.

All too soon, the Brooke had pulled back; the kiss was over as quickly as it had started. As Vanessa’s eyes blinked open, she could see Brooke grinning at her, her cheeks tinted a soft shade of red (though Vanessa couldn’t tell if it was from the cold air or the kiss). Vanessa returned the grin, her stomach doing flips, before glancing up at the lights above them.

“Merry Christmas, I guess,” Vanessa whispered, finally releasing the breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding.

***

Three weeks later, that kiss was still on Vanessa’s mind.

That night it was all she could think of, because Brooke was sitting beside her on the floor of her apartment, their backs resting against the standard gray couch, and Brooke’s overnight bag was leaning sitting off in the corner. The walls of the room were lined with colorful Christmas lights, Vanessa having opted to hang the lights on the walls rather than on the tree that stood in the corner.

They had spent the night drinking as they watched movies, chatting endlessly, and desperately trying to quiet their roars of laughter to avoid noise complaints from Vanessa’s neighbors. Nights like these used to be so easy, but something had changed between them. They had spent the night dancing around the elephant in the room.

By three a.m., they were both exhausted and their guards had dropped. Both girls were fairly tipsy at that point, but neither was drunk, per se. For Vanessa, the alcohol had relaxed her, allowing her to forget some of the nerves she felt whenever Brooke was around. It had given her an extra boost of confidence, one that she’d desperately needed.

The pair had given up on their unspoken two-foot-gap rule a couple hours prior, as Brooke was now lying with her head resting on Vanessa’s leg, her eyes shut as the other girl silently played with her hair. Brooke let out a soft, content hum, and Vanessa’s heart fluttered. Vanessa noticed that with Brooke, alcohol made her much more affectionate than she normally was, her affection manifesting in little touches here and there. Not that Vanessa was complaining; each little touch from Brooke sent a jolt of electricity down her spine and felt like it was setting her skin on fire.

After a long silence hanging between them, Vanessa cut through it with a soft, dejected sigh. Brooke’s eyes slowly opened, her gaze fixed directly on Vanessa’s face so intensely that Vanessa had to look away. She could have sworn she saw Brooke’s face fall out of the corner of her eye.

“That kiss…” Vanessa started, her mind fumbling over the monologue she had rehearsed in her head all throughout the night. “What are we?”

Brooke sat up then, moving so she was sitting directly in front of Vanessa. Their knees were touching, but just barely, as they sat facing each other, Brooke visibly tripping over her thoughts as she tried to craft a response to the shorter girl. The resulting pause was long and deafeningly silent. It was enough to make Vanessa want to scream.

“Say something,” Vanessa blurted out, her fingers picking at the frayed hem of her denim shorts. “ _Please_.”

It made her feel dumb, pathetic even, that she needed an answer from the blonde in front of her so badly. The nervous butterflies in her stomach had gradually been building throughout the evening – add in the alcohol she had consumed, and Vanessa swore she was going to be sick if she didn’t get an answer as soon as possible.

“I don’t know, Nessa,” Brooke breathed at last, her shoulders slumping forward just slightly as she ran one hand through her loose curls. “What do you want us to be?”

“More than this,” Vanessa’s reply was almost immediate. In that moment, there was no way she could have brought herself to prolong her response. She didn’t need to mull things over, not the way Brooke seemed to need to. Vanessa knew _exactly_ what she wanted, even if she couldn’t outright say _I want you to fall for me the way I fell for you._

Vanessa could see Brooke’s eyes widen the slightest bit before she quickly redirected her gaze to focus on the soft lights hanging on the walls. There was an unsteadiness in her movements, her hands beginning to shake slightly as she pushed her hair backwards, out of her face.

“I don’t do relationships,” Brooke commented a moment later, her words like a knife through Vanessa’s heart. “I’m just – what’s the lesbian version of a fuckboy? I’m a lesbian fuckboy.”

In any other circumstance, Vanessa would have laughed at Brooke’s drunken choice of words. In any other circumstance, Vanessa would have insisted that no, Brooke was not a lesbian fuckboy, that she was just being unnecessarily hard on herself. In any other circumstance, Vanessa would have moved in closer, carefully held Brooke’s hands until they stopped shaking. But those were the last things Vanessa wanted to do in that moment. Instead, she sat in silence, looking at Brooke and mentally trying to will the blonde to meet her eyes once more.

It took a minute, but once Brooke did meet Vanessa’s eyes, her stomach sank. There were so many things she wanted to say, but Vanessa couldn’t bring herself to say anything other than a small, quiet, “I love you.”

The change in Brooke’s facial expression was what broke the rest of Vanessa’s heart. She watched as the blonde went from looking nervous, not wanting to fuck things up, to regarding Vanessa with pity in her eyes. Vanessa _hated_ feeling pitied, so much so that rather than waiting for Brooke’s response, she stood up, earning herself a confused look from Brooke instead.

“What are you doing?” Brooke asked, cautiously standing up before she moved to stand in front of the shorter girl. There was still pity in her eyes as Brooke raised a hand to rest on Vanessa’s shoulder, and the shorter girl shrugged it off with a huff.

“Going to bed. Unless you’re going to tell me you genuinely have feelings for me too, I think you should leave.” There was a moment of hesitation from Brooke, one that almost made Vanessa hope she would actually say she did have feelings for her. But then the moment was over, and Vanessa stood watching as Brooke nodded silently before moving to pick up her overnight bag. She wrapped her arms around herself, as if it would protect her from feeling any more heartache.

As Brooke was about to leave, she paused at the door, looking back at Vanessa for a moment.

“I’m sorry. I love you, just not in that way.”

“I know.”

With that, Vanessa watched as her friend walked out her front door, the click of the latch sealing the divide between them. She allowed herself to slump against the wall, staring at the door silently. There was a part of her that hoped Brooke would come back, have a change of heart, confess her undying love for Vanessa, but it didn’t happen. Brooke didn’t step foot back through the front door, letting Vanessa know that it was over, not that it ever really started in the first place. So, she dragged herself to bed, drifting off to sleep the moment she closed her eyes, and when she woke up in the morning to a text from Brooke inviting her to grab coffee, Vanessa deleted the text without replying.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on tumblr @hy-jinkx


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